This timely exhibition and catalogue can be accessed
in Europe until 26 January 2006. It is timely because it appropriately
adjusts the balance of influences upon Finland at this crucial period
and thoroughly and effectively reviews the special influence that
Finnish art gave to the wider European spectrum. Stephan Koja, an
expert on Gustav Klimt, is currently a curator at the Osterreichische
Galerie Belvedere Vienna and co-ordinates important contributory
essays from a wide range of Finnish scholars. Paintings have been
assembled from Sweden, Hungary and Finland, many of which have never
been seen before outside Finland. Curator, Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse,
who made an important contribution to the exhibition and catalogue,
'Dreams of a Summer Night: Scandinavian painting at the turn of
the century' (Hayward Gallery, 1986) is again prominent in this
current exhibition. Her essay (co-written with Timo Housko), entitled
'Landscapes of the Mind', is particularly relevant to the exhibits
by male and female artists of the 1890s, exploring the 'Mystery
of Self' and 'The Individual in the Modern World'.

This exhibition is notable for the extent to which
it documents the influence of France and Russia. The strong pull
by Edvard Munch across Scandinavia was accordingly balanced by a
tidal wash from St Petersburg after Sergei Diaghilev's invitation
to Finnish artists to share an exhibition with Russian counterparts
from there. In Helsinki, Russian art was shown in the Blaue Reiter
(Blue Rider) group exhibition of 1912, when the Die Brucke
(The Bridge) group was represented in the Salon Strindberg gallery
in 1914, run by August Strindberg's nephew, Sven Strindberg. Wassily
Kandinsky also had a solo exhibition there in 1917. These were difficult
times for Finland, losing her autonomy in 1908, when the weak Tsar
Nicholas II failed to uphold the favourable measures settled by
Tsar Alexander III. A turbulent series of events was only concluded
by the recognition by Lenin of Finnish independence in 1920, after
skilful Finnish diplomatic and political overtures.

Against this uncertain background, which ran through the whole period
covered by this exhibition, there was a rising cultural self-determination
in Finland that differentiated, and perhaps strengthened, the core
of Finnish art in contrast to a prevalent degree of escapism evident
elsewhere throughout Scandinavia itself. Another loosening of traditional
relationships came with the growth of female artists to prominence
in Finland, frequently overlooked in previous surveys. They tend
to have been left out of descriptions of the early gestation of
modernism, seen to be an all-male preserve for the most part. Symbolism,
as Soili Sinisalo points out in the Introduction to the catalogue,
was considered a more appropriate preserve for women artists. The
exhibition has sought admirably to correct this imbalance, attributing
to them, where now due, a crucial part in the history of modernism.
Sigrid Schaumann's abstracted landscapes in the exhibition bear
this out. Leena Ahtola-Moorhouse has underlined her own influential
critical role in 1997 in a remarkable exhibition, 'In Women's Rooms'
(Ateneum, Finnish National Art Gallery, Helsinki, 1997). The paintings
of Ellen Thesleff are hung well in the exhibition and emphasise
this transition with similar force.

Another recognition that this exhibition enhances, especially for
those unfamiliar with Finland's cultural individualism, is of the
strong link between Finland and Austria, or more specifically, Helsinki
and Vienna. It is not simply just evident in the quality of coffee
and chocolates, contributing to a cultural ambience still surviving
in both cities; but derives from linkages fostered at the time of
the Secession. The great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, could
not complete his musical education without a stint in Vienna. In
the more recent past, architects from Finland have been the main
beneficiaries of this connection, with a professorship made available
to more than one distinguished architect from Finland. Another persistent
theme and inspiration that runs through the majority of the works
in this exhibition, lies in the relationship of the artist to his
landscape. It is, of course, a Finnish landscape: but how different
is it from the same inheritance as exemplified in Swedish, Russian,
and Norwegian painting. A certain lightness of being persists in
Swedish painting (in works by Eugen Jansson, Gustav Fjaestad and
Carl Larsson) that is replicated in Danish works. Norway is different,
and Finland is even more of a world apart. Russian painters of the
same period display a greater affinity with painters in Finland.
Such artists as Isaak Levitan and Mikhail Nesterov could be mistaken
for Finns. Indeed Nesterov had himself visited Finland, for a period.
But it is in the wealth of different appraisals of landscape that
the exhibition here reveals the fundamental strength and focus of
Finnish art. Here, that element of the land that is at the heart
of every Finn provides the basis for transnational influences of
the turn of the century, such as the Secession, Die Brucke,
and, of course, French impressionism.

Landscape is the all-important, unifying element in the work of
these artists of both sexes: and this can be taken not only to represent
the external environment of man, but also to include the inner landscapes
of all, as typified by innumerable self-portraits (eg Helene Schjerfbeck)
or as in Akseli Gallen-Kallela's deeply psychological study of Maxim
Gorki.

The book is punctuated by half a dozen two-page spread photographs
of turn-of-the-century Helsinki scenes that provide an excellent
atmospheric backdrop to the substantial range of colour illustrations
of the paintings. Two works by Marcus Collin seem, with their sombre
scenes of social upheaval or oppression, to contradict the prevalent,
somewhat optimistic view of the process of industrialisation, another
backdrop to the development of modernism. The exhibition does not
cover architecture as such, but the catalogue should enhance understanding
of the surge of outstanding modern building in Finland, which followed
the period covered. The later spirit was indeed translated into
architecture in the works of Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto, with
world-resounding success, through most of the 20th century. This
exhibition is an important milestone for European modernism, and
the catalogue itself repays fuller study.